The Fall of the Families

by Phillip Mann

  The blast as he left would have wakened the dead,

  And he took Bett to Luxury.

  As a prisoner to Luxury.

  At the mention of Luxury a great shout went up from the audience. Peron had heard of Luxury. It was a famous penal planet noted for the cruelty meted out to prisoners.

  Elizabeth Death was incarcerated on Luxury and tortured in the hope that this might make Jack Death capitulate. But he didn’t. By a ruse he managed to get the Fare-Thee-Well close to the prison fortress of Luxury and there, after rescuing most of the prisoners, he methodically destroyed the entire planet. The convicts who were rescued from Luxury and taken aboard the Fare-Thee-Well were the founding fathers and mothers of the people who now dwelt in the Pocket. But John Death Elliott was too late to save his sister.

  They carried Bett to the surface,

  Wrapped in a prison sheet.

  They lifted her up through the prison gate,

  And set her on her feet.

  She stood and shook on swollen feet,

  She stood like a girl with no soul,

  She stared like the blind, for they’d scrubbed her mind,

  As clean as a surgeon’s bowl.

  At this point in the song Bardol stopped and lifted his arms. There was absolute silence in the chamber. Slowly the singer began to chant.

  Names bring honour. Let me name a few.

  A man called Pettet, a girl called Blue.

  When she heard her name mentioned the girl who had been stirring stew by the fire dropped her ladle.

  A Smith, a Lee, a child called Lynn,

  The singer was pointing unerringly about the chamber.

  A Minsk, a Raj and Haberjin.

  Haberjin raised a clenched fist.

  Those I have missed be not offended,

  Soonest begun is soonest ended.

  The roots of every family tree,

  Trace back to the people of Luxury.

  Here spontaneous applause broke out.

  And those I mention at this time,

  Are only here to serve the rhyme.

  Catcalls and hoots and laughter greeted this.

  Now since your gifts I hope to earn,

  To my story I’ll return.

  Bardol composed himself in his chair. He told how the Fare-Thee-Well escaped from the Proctor fleets and entered the Pocket. He told how the first colonies were established and how finally, one day, John Death Elliott and the Fare-Thee-Well disappeared.

  And what became of Captain Jack,

  And the proud ship Fare-Thee-Well?

  That’s a secret the Pocket keeps,

  The truth no man can tell.

  There are tales of a ghostly freighter,

  Will come like a shooting star,

  Blazing bright with Elmo’s light,

  Deadly as arrow that flies in the night,

  Ready to serve and ready to fight,

  If danger comes from afar.

  Everyone in the chamber joined in the final stanza. They had been waiting for it.

  We of the Pocket remember,

  And once every year must tell,

  The tale of Death and his sister Bett,

  And the proud ship Fare-Thee-Well.

  Bardol collapsed back in his chair. The roar of the applause made the tapestries stir. One of the singer’s attendants filled his clay pipe and lit it and offered it to him. He received it gratefully and turned his chair to the fire. The applause continued while children zoomed round the room imitating the exploits of John Death Elliott destroying Luxury.

  “You see,” said Haberjin turning to Peron, “we are a family.” There were tears in his eyes. “United by suffering. And the Pocket will never be taken by a human foe.”

  “I feel privileged to be here,” said Peron. His words were stiff and awkward, but there was no mistaking his feeling.

  Gradually, as the hours slipped by, the mood of the party changed. After the dancing and the singing and the eating and the drinking, people were content to lie back at their ease and just talk. Many were gathered round Bardol who, after his exertions, was tucking into a bowl of the “prison” food which was the traditional fare of the Great Festival. This was the stew that had been simmering by the fire.

  Pettet sat on the floor with his back to the fireplace holding the child Lynn curled up on his lap. She was dreamily combing his beard with her fingers. “Is it all true?” she asked suddenly. “Was there really a Captain Death and a ship called the Fare-Thee-Well?

  “All true,” rumbled Pettet. “Elizabeth Elliott’s grave is over on Ra. And there are even some pictures down in the library which we think might be the Fare-Thee-Well. It looks like a rare old rocket. But it was big. I’ve never seen another ship like it.”

  “Wasn’t it an alien ship then?” This from a small red-headed boy with a face full of freckles.

  Haberjin joined the conversation. “No one can tell. We don’t know what it was like inside. But if the ballad is true, it’s my guess it had transformation generators.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Like the song says, no one knows.”

  “It’s my thinking,” said Pettet, “that we’ll find that ship one day.”

  “You and your dreams,” said Raleigh.

  “No, I really think so. Look at some of the things we’ve found. That old mining torus, that was from olden times. And we’ve got the charts from those days. I think that one day we’ll be looking round the dark side of a moon and we’ll find her. I doubt if she’ll have crashed. Old John Elliott wasn’t the type to crash. He might have run out of fuel or food.”

  “I hope I’m there when you do,” said Haberjin. “I’d like to look under the skin of that old ship.”

  “Hope I’m there too,” said the freckled-faced boy.

  “Well, I hope I’m not,” said Bardol, joining the conversation for the first time. “I see it all too clearly, up here.” He tapped his head. “Reality can be a great disappointment. But I’ll tell you this. Sometimes, when I’m deep in the song, I know that I’m really seeing it. It is as though I’m there with them, fighting, burning. The song carries me back.”

  “Like telepathy?” asked Peron.

  “Bah. Telepathy is for children. I’m talking about something much grander. The songs are a chink in time. The songs give us facts and they give us explanations. They give us living history. If the song says the Fare-Thee-Well came from an alien forge, then that’s where it came from. And I’ll tell you this, too. I don’t think you’ll ever find the Fare-Thee-Well. I think John Elliott destroyed it. I think he dived into a star. Remember, we are not dealing with normal human beings, we are dealing with makers of history. They follow different logic. I think he destroyed the Fare-Thee-Well, because it was more than a ship, and its work was done; and so was his work done. There’s a lovely old song about that, written in the olden tongue.” The singer reached for his pipe.

  “Why do you smoke that thing?” asked Lynn.

  “It helps me remember, helps keep my memory clear. There are so many songs. It would take me a year to sing them all.”

  He lit the pipe and breathed deeply.

  Slowly his seeing eye closed and his blind eye opened.

  Later that night, safe in his “burrow” above the lake, Peron took stock of the day. He seemed to have lived an entire lifetime since his arrival in the Pocket that morning. During most of the day he had tried to be the good historian, weighing facts objectively. Then the party had come, and the singing and the emotion, and objectivity had gone out of the window.

  He couldn’t remember how the evening ended, though he had a vague memory of staggering home with Haberjin and a couple of other people, and singing songs he had not sung since he was a boy.

  They had gone for a swim, that was it. Or at least he assumed they had taken a dip, for he woke up in his room with his clothes still wet on him.

  Now his brain had cleared. He didn’t feel sleepy at all. He felt brilliant. He wanted to do som
ething, say something, write something.

  He found his book placed carefully on the table. That at least was safe and not damp, though some of the pages smelled of the liquor brewed on Lumb.

  What are these people? he thought as he looked at his drawings and notes. What makes them so different?

  Peron found a pencil and chewed on the end of it for a few moments, then he began to write.

  “All the people in the place called Elliott’s Pocket seem to share something. It is not something physical, though in general they are taller and broader than the average assembly of humans. No, it is a quality: a calmness. But it is neither passive nor sedate. It is like the quiet side of exhilaration. The climber who sits at the top of a mountain and looks down the steep slopes to the valley floor from which he has climbed feels something of this … as does the pilot who safely brings the big ship to harbour through reefs and shallows. I am in the most dangerous place in the galaxy. Tomorrow the skies may split. But I have never felt safer in my life.”

  There. Peron looked at his words and felt pleased. He had managed to say something.

  Then he stripped off his clothes and fell flat on his face, asleep.

  Paris was not asleep. He didn’t know where he was and didn’t care. All he knew was that he was in the arms of the most beautiful girl he had ever met and that was all he needed to know.

  Nor were Pawl and Laurel asleep. Pawl was on his knees beside his wife with his ear pressed to her belly. “Ssh. I can hear something.”

  “No you can’t. It’s far too small.”

  “I can. I can.”

  “All right have it your own way.” She stretched. “I feel wonderful.”

  “Just wait until I tell Pettet and Raleigh.”

  “They already know. Well, Raleigh does. I told her this evening. She says she’ll come to our Homeworld for the birth.”

  Many things had happened to Pawl in his life, and now two new events. He was to be a father. That was the first. And Laurel had used the word “our” to refer to the Paxwax world. Pawl had never heard her do that before.

  And what of Odin?

  That creature was very still, stooped beneath a willow by the lake. Peron, on his way home, had stopped beside him and said, “Why don’t you talk to me, Odin?” And then he had fallen into the lake and been dragged out.

  Except for Raleigh, Peron was the only human contact that Odin had known all day.

  Raleigh had been kind and watchful and Odin did not trust her. She had immense reserves of energy. Periodically during the day Odin sent his mind out and tried to contact Pawl, but he was too concentrated on affairs in the Pocket. Later Pawl’s mind was sticky with alcohol and Odin could make no sense of him.

  Then later still, when the sounds of singing were dying round the lake, had come the bolt of bright blue lightning. Odin felt Pawl’s joy like the stab of a salt wind. It had overwhelmed him, squeezing his stone, until the pain and joy became unbearable and he willed himself unconscious.

  Laurel pregnant.

  He had never expected this.

  There was now no way he could carry out his assigned duty.

  Logic gave him an escape. Killing Laurel was one thing, but he had no mandate to kill her baby.

  He sought refuge in that foolish logic.

  It was as well.

  Odin was cut off from all contact with the wider galaxy. He did not know that the mission of the Inner Circle had suddenly become even more pressing.

  8

  AMONG THE OUTER FAMILIES

  The trouble began with Laverna Felice.

  “Well, aren’t we cozy,” she said, screwing up her baby-doll face into a grimace.

  Singular Sith, still sleepy since the call to a meeting had come in the middle of the Sith Home world night, performed a characteristic gesture, reaching up and gripping his fine spread of horns and running his hands down them. Then he scratched the woolly hair above his forehead and tried to concentrate. “What do you mean, Laverna?”

  Laverna Felice did not reply immediately but turned her violet-eyed gaze on Cicero Paragon. That worthy swung in a gravity harness: his legs could no longer support his slabs of fat. He looked at Laverna. His eyes were bright but slightly unfocused. “I was cozy,” he said, speaking carefully and precisely. “I hope the interruption has been worth the effort.”

  “It has. Or it will be. I feel I can no longer keep silent.”

  Singular Sith groaned inwardly but was careful that his feelings did not show on his face. How many times, he wondered, had he humoured the silly woman who ruled the Felice Family. Hundreds. Now, if she were here, he thought,I could pick her up in the palm of my hand and place her on a pedestal where she could fume to her heart’s content, and we could all get some sleep.

  But of course she wasn’t there. There was no “where”. There was an abstraction created by the magic of vivante communication. Laverna sat in her doll’s house on her Homeworld, though she appeared twice as large as life on the Homeworlds of the Sith and Paragon.

  “I am in no mood for riddles,” said Cicero Paragon, “I was in an important meeting. Important negoshiations … Himportant….”

  “I understand. Well, this too is important. When I said ‘Aren’t we cozy’ I was not referring to the whole state of all our empires.”

  Singular Sith stuck his bull face forward. He had finally woken up. Though he had no liking for the diminutive Felice, he had a deep respect for their intelligence. Invariably they knew what was going on among the Inner Families before the Sith did and invariably they outguessed them. “Speak clearly, Laverna. Is there something we should know?”

  “Look at us.” The small lady shifted on her throne. “We have become soft. We have become so used to being cozy that nothing matters any more. We are facing a moral dilemma and I seem to be the only one who sees it.”

  “What are you talking about?” This from Cicero, who was now sipping on an astringent solution which made his eyes water. He was becoming rapidly sober.

  “I am talking about the Paxwax boy. Have you followed events? First we allow him to defy the Code and marry that fish woman who is not of the Eleven, but now he is apparently out there somewhere –” she gestured vaguely – “having fun, while the Shell-Bogdanovich Conspiracy mind his affairs. Time was when if a Master left his Homeworld all the Families would move to attack. But now the Proctor and even the Wong seem to be eating out of his hand. The boy is a menace. If he is allowed to continue in this way he will destroy all of us.”

  “How will he destroy us?” Cicero Paragon and Singular Sith spoke together.

  “He will destroy our faith in the Code, our faith in our will, our authority.”

  “With all due respect, may I say that I doubt that,” said Cicero Paragon. “May I remind you that Pawl Paxwax is the son of Toby Paxwax and that blood will out. Toby was a fierce Master and so I believe will his son be, despite irregularities.”

  “Further,” said Singular Sith, following Cicero’s lead, “the young Master of Paxwax has powerful friends. I do not think it would be wise for we of the Outer Families to question the alliance formed by the Shell-Bogdanovich Conspiracy Second, with the Paxwax.”

  “Huh,” said Laverna, “we all know that the Sith made trade deals with the Paxwax as soon as they could after the war.”

  “Business,” said Singular, with a shrug. “Business. I trade where I can. As do we all. If you are simply jealous….”

  “Jealousy doesn’t enter into it. I am talking about purity. What if I tell you that the Paxwax is having dealings with aliens?”

  That statement caused both Singular and Cicero to pause. They looked at one another. Any dealings with aliens were expressly forbidden by the Code. Yet many families used alien inventiveness and endurance to support their empires. Cicero Paragon had teams of Spiderets who worked his mining planets. Singular Sith had farms in which Hooded Parasol were raised and then gassed and put through presses to extract their colours for dyes. It was widely known that
the armies of the now defeated Lamprey had been grown from a mixture of alien and human stock. Even so, latent within most humans was a phobia concerning the aliens. While the genetic balance of the leading families regressed in many ways, they yet retained a concept of racial purity; and when a crisis emerged, any crisis, the aliens were the first to be rounded up and blamed.

  “Have you forgotten the Code?” Laverna was becoming shrill as she warmed to her theme. “The Code was devised by our forefathers to keep us strong. They learned in the Great Push that the weak go to the wall and only the strong survive. Would that we had men like them alive today.” Here she looked at Cicero Paragon, who hung like an over-stuffed baby in the cradle of his anti-gravity unit. “The alien is an abomination.”

  “What makes you think that the Paxwax has dealings with aliens?” asked Singular Sith.

  “Was it not a Spideret that caused havoc on the Homeworld of the Xerxes?”

  “That is only a rumour. And if Clarissa and Jettatura were so silly as to keep a rogue Spideret on their Homeworld, in their very Tree even, well….”

  “And I know that Pawl Paxwax has visited the Homeworld of the Hammer.”

  “Tell that to the Wong. I didn’t even know there still were any Hammer. The Hammer have not been heard of since … how long, Cicero?”

  “Hundreds and hundreds of years.” He laughed, and as he laughed he quivered. To him, the Hammer were the stuff of ancient history.

  “The Hammer are no more than that,” said Singular Sith, snapping his fingers. “And if Master Pawl Paxwax has visited the Hammer, well, good luck to him. I too have visited alien sites and worlds … for hunting. Now if you have nothing further….”

  “You are fools, both of you. You have forgotten the words of the Anthem. I must inform you both that I intend to raise this matter at the next meeting of the Council of the Eleven, and to show that I am serious I intend to begin a purge of aliens throughout all my worlds. You’ll see, the Council will listen to my warning. And then woe betide alien lovers, be they small or big.”